2018-03-20T01:47:20ZThe Temptation of the Reader : The Search for Meaning in Boris Akunin's Pelagia Trilogyhttp://hdl.handle.net/10023/12513
This article discusses the games that Boris Akunin’s Pelagia trilogy (2000-2003) plays with the reader’s attempts at interpretation and meaning-making. Most critics agree that detective fiction in this ‘whodunnit’ mode is a genre that invites the active participation of its reader in order to uncover a hidden truth. What Akunin’s trilogy does, however, is simultaneously to invite this participation and playfully frustrate it by thwarting or disrupting the reader’s various attempts at solving its puzzles. This article considers the ludic elements of Akunin’s trilogy in three different, though related, interpretive spheres: historical reference; intertextual and metatextual reference; and the search for faith. It concludes that the Pelagia trilogy is best viewed as an example of postmodernist metaphysical detective fiction, which poses provocative questions about the nature of knowledge, the status of meaning, as well as the act of reading.
2016-01-18T00:00:00ZWhitehead, Claire EugenieThis article discusses the games that Boris Akunin’s Pelagia trilogy (2000-2003) plays with the reader’s attempts at interpretation and meaning-making. Most critics agree that detective fiction in this ‘whodunnit’ mode is a genre that invites the active participation of its reader in order to uncover a hidden truth. What Akunin’s trilogy does, however, is simultaneously to invite this participation and playfully frustrate it by thwarting or disrupting the reader’s various attempts at solving its puzzles. This article considers the ludic elements of Akunin’s trilogy in three different, though related, interpretive spheres: historical reference; intertextual and metatextual reference; and the search for faith. It concludes that the Pelagia trilogy is best viewed as an example of postmodernist metaphysical detective fiction, which poses provocative questions about the nature of knowledge, the status of meaning, as well as the act of reading.Two Natures Translated from the Russian by Emily Finerhttp://hdl.handle.net/10023/10241
2017-02-01T00:00:00ZFiner, EmilyPerforming as Soviet Central Asia’s source texts : Lahuti and Džambul in Moscow, 1935-1936http://hdl.handle.net/10023/8333
This article explores the indigenization of the representation of Soviet Central Asia in Russian-language literature by examining how two Central Asian literary figures—the “Tajik” poet Abulqasim Lahuti and the Kazakh bard Džambul Džabaev were promoted in Russian in the mid-1930s. More specifically, it discusses the canonization of Lahuti and Džambul within the Soviet literary system in 1935 and 1936, arguing that it occurred when each performed in Moscow and demonstrated his ability to serve Stalin’s “friendship of peoples” both as a translated court poet and an embodiment of the East, which is to say as an untranslatable source text.
2015-03-12T00:00:00ZHolt, Katharine MansfieldThis article explores the indigenization of the representation of Soviet Central Asia in Russian-language literature by examining how two Central Asian literary figures—the “Tajik” poet Abulqasim Lahuti and the Kazakh bard Džambul Džabaev were promoted in Russian in the mid-1930s. More specifically, it discusses the canonization of Lahuti and Džambul within the Soviet literary system in 1935 and 1936, arguing that it occurred when each performed in Moscow and demonstrated his ability to serve Stalin’s “friendship of peoples” both as a translated court poet and an embodiment of the East, which is to say as an untranslatable source text.Soviet and post-Soviet identitieshttp://hdl.handle.net/10023/7942
2014-01-01T00:00:00ZDonovan, Victoria SophieHow well do you know your krai? The kraevedenie revival and patriotic politics in late Khrushchev-era Russiahttp://hdl.handle.net/10023/7706
This article examines the state-sponsored rise of local patriotism in the post-1961 period, interpreting it as part of the effort to strengthen popular support for and the legitimacy of the Soviet regime during the second phase of de-Stalinization. It shifts the analytical focus away from the Secret Speech of 1956, the time of Nikita Khrushchev's full-scale assault on Iosif Stalin and his legacy, to the Twenty-Second Party Congress of 1961, the inauguration of a utopian and pioneering plan to build communism by 1980. I consider how this famously forward-looking program gave rise to an institutionalized retrospectivism, as Soviet policymakers turned to the past to mobilize popular support for socialist construction. I examine how this process played out in the Russian northwest, where Soviet citizens were encouraged to turn inward, to examine their local history and traditions, and to reread these through a socialist lens.
This article is based on doctoral research carried out as part of an AHRC-funded project titled “National Identity in Russia since 1961: Traditions and Deterritorialisation” (2007–11).
2015-01-01T00:00:00ZDonovan, Victoria SophieThis article examines the state-sponsored rise of local patriotism in the post-1961 period, interpreting it as part of the effort to strengthen popular support for and the legitimacy of the Soviet regime during the second phase of de-Stalinization. It shifts the analytical focus away from the Secret Speech of 1956, the time of Nikita Khrushchev's full-scale assault on Iosif Stalin and his legacy, to the Twenty-Second Party Congress of 1961, the inauguration of a utopian and pioneering plan to build communism by 1980. I consider how this famously forward-looking program gave rise to an institutionalized retrospectivism, as Soviet policymakers turned to the past to mobilize popular support for socialist construction. I examine how this process played out in the Russian northwest, where Soviet citizens were encouraged to turn inward, to examine their local history and traditions, and to reread these through a socialist lens.Shkliarevskii and Russian Detective Fiction : The Influence of Dostoevskiihttp://hdl.handle.net/10023/4313
This article examines the writing of A.A. Shkliarevskii, an important figure in early Russian detective fiction, in the light of the influence of F.M. Dostoevskii.
2013-01-01T00:00:00ZWhitehead, Claire EugenieThis article examines the writing of A.A. Shkliarevskii, an important figure in early Russian detective fiction, in the light of the influence of F.M. Dostoevskii.The Letter of the law : literacy and orality in S. A. Panov's Murder in Medveditsa Villagehttp://hdl.handle.net/10023/3485
This article takes as its subject a nineteenth-century detective story: S.A. Panov’s Murder in Medveditsa Village (1872). Panov’s work is remarkable amongst its contemporaries for the way in which it interrogates the relative authority of the written and the spoken word in the criminal investigation and, in so doing, foregrounds the role and status that detective fiction assigns to language. The aim of the present article is to discuss the ambiguously nuanced illustration Panov provides of the relative power of written, spoken and non-verbal language in the particular context of the functioning of the law and the pursuit of the ‘truth’, two cornerstones of detective fiction. Language, and especially the written word, is thus shown to play the decisive role in structuring the various networks of authority operating in and around the fictional world.
2011-01-01T00:00:00ZWhitehead, Claire EugenieThis article takes as its subject a nineteenth-century detective story: S.A. Panov’s Murder in Medveditsa Village (1872). Panov’s work is remarkable amongst its contemporaries for the way in which it interrogates the relative authority of the written and the spoken word in the criminal investigation and, in so doing, foregrounds the role and status that detective fiction assigns to language. The aim of the present article is to discuss the ambiguously nuanced illustration Panov provides of the relative power of written, spoken and non-verbal language in the particular context of the functioning of the law and the pursuit of the ‘truth’, two cornerstones of detective fiction. Language, and especially the written word, is thus shown to play the decisive role in structuring the various networks of authority operating in and around the fictional world.